Diana Vang-Brostoff is on two simultaneous missions, one for the world and one for herself.
You may know her as the wife of Alderman Jonathan Brostoff, obm, who tragically died by suicide on Nov. 4, 2024, after much of his beloved, left-leaning Milwaukee social network turned on him, post-Oct. 7. While it’s not possible to attribute the tragic loss to any one thing, and Brostoff had spoken openly about his mental health challenges, it’s also true that multiple friends and colleagues viewed the antisemitic and anti-Israel fervor of the time as a contributing factor, according to prior Chronicle coverage.
But at Vang-Brostoff’s request, for this, her first interview with a journalist, we didn’t get into all that. She’s not looking to stir things up, and she hasn’t been working to build a bigger public persona. “People have been very kind and doing lots of reaching out, but I was trying to mostly maintain alone time and family time to process the trauma,” she said.
We stayed on mission, which is essentially that Vang-Brostoff does not want to be defined by loss and wishes for more kindness in the world.
Mission number one is the personal journey. “You know, pain and suffering is necessary in life. I’m not going to let it define who I am. We’ll let the pain and suffering refine my character, make me a stronger as a person, and also help me be a light for others who have experienced the same thing,” she said.
“And then the other (mission) is just continuously trying to promote grace and kindness,” she said, adding quickly that “I understand that we don’t have all the answers about the world, ourselves and others.”
Though Vang-Brostoff is not Jewish, her husband was, and the devoted city servant connected with the Jewish-themed Friendship Circle regarding its efforts to prevent suicide in the entire Milwaukee-area community.
Now, Vang-Brostoff, a licensed clinical social worker, will assist Friendship Circle with its suicide prevention efforts. She will speak on Sept. 10, at the final stop of Friendship Circle’s UMatter suicide prevention tour. “We all struggle with mental health issues, so when we’re more open to talking about what we’re experiencing, you find that other people relate,” Vang-Brostoff said.
The personal journey
As a social worker, Vang-Brostoff has worked with adults facing chronic, severe mental health issues like schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and depression. She worked for nearly ten years locally for the Veterans Administration. “I was doing case management, building relationships with clients, trying to help them maintain community, taking them out to movies,” she said. “Oh my gosh. It was so great. It was very enriching.”
She said she has heard people suggest that mental illness is a sign of weakness. She disagrees, seeing that take as “a disregard for the different reasons why mental health can be exacerbated. This is biological, social, environmental. It’s pretty complex. That’s why we have to learn how to talk about it.”
“The concept of postpartum depression, for example – it doesn’t look linear for everybody. And, by the way, it can last for a really long time.”
Vang-Brostoff is now a single mother, with four children between the ages of 2 and 6. It tugs at the heart. And yet she asks to be treated “normal,” and for her kids to not be treated like they are the sad children of a lost superhero. She’s had wild ideas, like changing her name and moving the whole family to get away from it all, she said.
Over the last couple years, she said she’s learned a lot about the central nervous system and how it reacts to trauma. As a clinician, she said she knew this in theory, but “until you experience really difficult things in life, you just really can’t fathom what someone is going through physically.”
She threw herself into running this winter, going for runs even when it was below zero. It kept the anxiety under control. She “rolled” her ankle twice and had to take a break for 16 weeks, returning to running just last month.
Vang-Brostoff noted another component for her own mental health. She’s slowed down. Any political and community isolation has now slid into a lifestyle that can be healthy, not so social and frantic. She reports, with a relaxed tone of voice, that’s she’s doing “pretty good,” with a “great support system in place,” including her parents. She’s developed routines, good for both her and the kids.
She’d like to tell you about the importance of attention to mental health and human kindness. See her speak at the Sept. 10 Friendship Circle UMatter event, which is being held in honor of her late husband. Register at fcwi.org/finalstop.
See it as a chance to hear from someone real, someone genuine with a message to believe in.
“I’m not a speaker,” she said. “I’m like the person that helps set up the room.”
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Diana-Vang Brostoff to speak
The “We Can Save Lives Tour,” a statewide suicide prevention initiative, will conclude its 41-stop journey on Wednesday, Sept. 10, 2025. Organized by UMatter Friendship Circle, a division of Lubavitch of Wisconsin, the tour has trained over 1,000 students through 40 SafeTALK suicide prevention sessions since Jonathan Brostoff’s passing.
The final event will feature two training sessions and a special community presentation at 10:30 a.m., with remarks from Diana-Vang Brostoff and local dignitaries. Registration is available at fcwi.org/finalstop.
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